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The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
by Timothy Ferriss
What do you do? Tim Ferriss has trouble answering the question. Depending on when you ask this
controversial Princeton University guest lecturer, he might answer:
“I race motorcycles in Europe.”
“I ski in the Andes.”
“I scuba dive in Panama.”
“I dance tango in Buenos Aires.”
He has spent more than five years learning the secrets of the New Rich, a fast-growing subculture who has abandoned the “deferred-life plan” and instead mastered the new currencies—time and mobility—to create luxury lifestyles in the here and now.
Whether you are an overworked employee or an entrepreneur trapped in your own business, this book is the compass for a new and revolutionary world. Join Tim Ferriss as he teaches you:
- How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want
- How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs
- How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist
- How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and freuent "mini-retirements"
- What the crucial difference is between absolute and relative income
- How to train your boss to value performance over presence, or kill your job (or company) if it’s beyond repair
- What automated cash-flow “muses” are and how to create one in 2 to 4 weeks
- How to cultivate selective ignorance—and create time—with a low-information diet
- What the management secrets of Remote Control CEOs are
- How to get free housing worldwide and airfare at 50–80% off
- How to fill the void and create a meaningful life after removing work and the office
You can have it all—really. ()
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THE ANATOMY OF LIFE AND ENERGY IN AGRICULTURE
by Arden B. Andersen
The energies in fertilizers and in the cosmos do not often move needles, but they preside over crop production. As this manual makes clear, through learning to tap and use "life-force energy" it is possible to develop food production practices that are both high quality and nondestructive. Since high sugar and mineral levels confer immunity to bacterial, insect and fungal attack, a complete Brix chart on crops is included. Andersen’s chapters outline in detail the difference between deadly slow-kill agribusiness farming and farming as it should be.
(Amazon.com)
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ANOTHER TURN OF THE CRANK
by Wendell Berry
Berry entitles his slim new book of essays with self-deflating ambivalence. Since he exhorts us again on his familiar themes--the necessity to democracy of rural communities and independent local economies; the inextricability of human from natural relationships; the importance of public property conceived and treated as common wealth; the bane that lies in confusing the organic with the mechanical, as in conceiving the body as a machine, the mind as a computer; etc.--he seems to think he risks appearing a repetitious crank, stubbornly trying to crank the engine of humane reform to life. He needn't have worried. He remains one of the most lucid writers on the most basic matters--growing food, living on earth, relating to other persons and creatures, the love enjoined by religion. He refuses to lapse into the furious jeremiad that the continuing decline of American agriculture as a way of living seems to mandate. Instead he is patient and sensible, hopeful that there is a loving wisdom to which humanity will turn and, as the Shaker hymn says, "come round right." (Ray Olson)
Six essays on sustainability and stewardship appear in this edition. One of America's most important cultural critics, Wendell Berry, urges that people learn once more to care for their local communities, and so begin a healing that might spread over our entire nation and beyond. Provocative, intimate, and thoughtful, Another Turn of the Crank reaches to the heart of Berry's concern and vision for the future, for America, and for the world. (Ingram) |
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CHANGING WORKS: Visions of a Lost Agriculture
by Douglas A. Harper
"Changing works" refers to the common practice of farm neighbors exchanging and combining their labor to do large jobs such as threshing and haying. In the United States, this tradition had died by the mid-20th century owing to technological advances in farm machinery and other factors. Here, Harper (sociology, Duquesne Univ.) documents the resulting social, economic, and environmental changes via interviews with a number of dairy farmers from upstate New York. He focuses on life in the Northeast, especially New York state, with discussions of farm machinery and the switch from horses to tractors, harvesting, dairying, gender roles in farming, and, of course, changing works. Also discussed are old (mid-century) photographs of typical farm work, nearly 100 of which are reproduced here, along with numerous photographs taken more recently by the author. Harper concludes that while modern technology has greatly reduced the amount of backbreaking human labor required, much has been lost socially and environmentally in the continuing trend toward larger and fewer farms. His engaging, very readable study is highly recommended for rural history and sociology collections in academic and public libraries. (William H. Wiese, Iowa State Univ. Lib.) |
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COMING HOME TO EAT: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods
by Gary Paul Nabhan
Does it matter where our food comes from? Do we, our communities, and the planet do better if we choose food grown by local sources we trust? Exploring these and other questions of dietary and spiritual subsistence, Gary Paul Nabhan's Coming Home to Eat presents a compelling case for eating from our "foodshed."
Nabhan, a subsistence hunter, ethnobiologist, and activist devoted to recovering lost food traditions, gave himself a task: to spend a year trying to eat foods grown, fished, or gathered within 250 miles of his Arizona home. His book, both personal document and political screed, details this experiment from the moment Nabhan purges his kitchen of canned and other processed foods ("If this year could resolve anything for me, perhaps it would rid me of the desire to ever again buy any packaged food that boasted of its homemade flavor....") to a final food-gathering pilgrimage. That journey underscores Nabhan's conviction that we have too easily believed "the vacuous nutritional promises of the industrialized food that has sold our health down the river." In fact, the book encompasses an ongoing pilgrimage, during which Nabhan explores, for example, the near loss of saguaro cactus fruit as a dietary staple due to saguaro's use for "local color" in shopping malls, golf courses, and retirement centers. Readers, converted, skeptical, or just curious, will find Nabhan's book a source of many simple and stirring truths. "Until we stop craving to
be somewhere else and someone else other than the animals whose very cells are constituted from the place on earth we love the most,"
he writes, "then there is little reason to care about the fate of native foods, family farms, or healthy landscapes and communities."
But care we must, as the book shows so enlighteningly. (Arthur Boehm)
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THE CONTRARY FARMER
by Gene Logsdon
No learned gentleman farmer, Logsdon earns his moments of lyricism by analyzing at length the daily demands on the cottage farmer (one whose holdings are much smaller than the 50 acres that economists deem "small"). He recommends alternatives: ways to avoid backbreaking work, to use gardens to test prospective crops, to ameliorate the "gruesome" tasks of butchering and tail docking, to access water for irrigation, to avoid the pitfalls of "controlled rational grazing," to determine the most functional crop for the working cottage farm (it's corn), and so on. All this by a man who also reads widely and has a down-home sense of humor, as well as no reluctance to express his opinions. So if at first you think that these farming essays are too technical for you, you're wrong. "Yeah, I could do that--avoid buying gadgets I don't need, be a lender rather than a borrower, live near a village where I can buy a home for $40,000," we muse, even if eventually we hear from Logsdon that we must "learn to fix cars and tractors" ourselves, and sigh, "Too much, too much." Logsdon deserves a larger audience than he will probably get. (Roland Wulbert) |
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THE CONTRARY FARMER'S INVITATION TO GARDENING
by Gene Logsdon
Gene Logsdon has done it again! One of his earlier books, The Contrary Farmer, is one of the most moving, sensible, readable books about sustainable farming on the market. Now Logsdon successfully applies that wry wit, wisdom, and storytelling faculty to gardening. The result is a perceptive and inspirational volume: it is nearly impossible to resist dreaming about getting out there and raising your own food after reading this intelligent, enjoyable book.
Logsdon's voice is utterly personal and sensible: he uses his experiences as well as tales of people he knows to point out absurdities of modern agricultural horticultural silliness. This same humor and clear-headedness are employed in considering the futility of industrialized farming, pesticide use, and the highly destructive methods of corporate and commercial farming and gardening. (Amazon.com)
Gene Logsdon breaks down the garden walls and celebrates the side of gardening that isn't a finicky, style-obsessed, and expensive hobby but rather a hilarious, sensual, and endlessly satisfying way of life. The borders of the contrary garden are limited only by the imagination. Why should "crops" be merely common vegetables? Why not wheat? Why not the pigeons on the rafters of the barn, or bluegills and edible cattails from your own homestead pond? This is Gene Logsdon at his provocative best. Frequently irreverent, but always optimistic and practical, he uses the tools of good humor and common sense to smash conventional gardening to smithereens. (Card catalog description) |
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FAMILY FRIENDLY FARMING: A Multi-Generationals Home-Based Business Testament
by Joel Salatin
Family friendly farming offers hope for stressed families, dissatisfied employees, and hurried-harried lifestyles. It is no secret that family farms are in trouble. The average age of US farmers is over 60 and the brightest, best young people flee from farming. This leaves our precious rural landscape not cared for by true stewards of the land. Owners who think interms of seasons and generations, instead of 4th quarter profits. Joel and his family have demonistrated, and openly shared, their experiences, both successes and failures about what it take to have a successful, Earth friendly family farm. If you are thinking about farming this book is not only one you must read - but it is one you must study. Hats off and a standing ovation to the Salatin family for helping show us the way to a better paradigm of food production. (Andy Lee)
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FAST FOOD NATION
by Eric Schlosser
On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways. Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. Quickly, however, he moves behind the counter with the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavor company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns." Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--feces in your meat. (Amazon.com's Best of 2001)
Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of federal oversight of a seemingly lawless industry. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting, and unsanitary practices that introduce E. coli and other pathogens into restaurants, public schools, and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young," insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. Fortunately, Schlosser offers some eminently practical remedies. "Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behavior," he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it "your way" really worth it? (Lesley Reed)
"...Schlosser is a serious and diligent reporter..." "[Fast Food Nation] is a fine piece of muckraking, alarming without beling alarmist." (Rob Walker, New York Times Book Review 1/21/01) |
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FAT LAND: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World
by Greg Critser
You reap what you sow. According to Critser, a leading journalist on health and obesity, America about 30 years ago went crazy sowing corn. Determined to satisfy an American public that "wanted what it wanted when it wanted it," agriculture secretary Earl Butz determined to lower American food prices by ending restrictions on trade and growing. The superabundance of cheap corn that resulted inspired Japanese scientists to invent a cheap sweetener called "high fructose corn syrup." This sweetener made food look and taste so great that it soon found its way into everything from bread to soda pop. Researchers ignored the way the stuff seemed to trigger fat storage. In his illuminating first book (which began life as a cover story for Harper's Magazine), Critser details what happened as this river of corn syrup (and cheap, lardlike palm oil) met with a fast-food marketing strategy that prized sales-via supersized "value" meals-over quality or conscience. The surgeon general has declared obesity an epidemic. About 61% of Americans are now overweight-20% of us are obese. Type 2 (i.e., fat-related) diabetes is exploding, even among c
hildren. Critser vividly describes the physical suffering that comes from being fat. He shows how the poor become the fattest,
victimized above all by the lack of awareness. Critser's book is a good first step in rectifying that. In vivid prose conveying the
urgency of the situation, with just the right amount of detail for general readers, Critser tells a story that they won't be able to
shake when they pass the soda pop aisle in the supermarket. This book should attract a wide readership. (Publishers Weekly)
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FIVE ACRES and INDEPENDENCE: A Handbook for Small Farm Management
by Maurice Grenville Kains, Maurice G. Kain, J. E. Oldfield
I have a 1946 edition of this book which my father used as a reference in supplying our family all of our food from 1948 until 1962 and a large portion of our food thereafter. I have referred to it on a regular basis since 1972. While the precise numbers for costs and quantity of production are dated, the basic principles for successful small farming are clearly elucidated. You can update the costs and quantities yourself. Some of the information on animal breeds should be updated by additional research. But the priciples are all here. The chapters on "City vs. Country Life" and "Tried and True Ways to Fail" are essential reading if you have never been involved in agriculture previously. I have many reference books, and this is one of the best...with a tattered cover and yellowed pages! (Anonymous) |
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FOOD POLITICS: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health
by Marion Nestle
In the U.S., we're bombarded with nutritional advice--the work, we assume, of reliable authorities with our best interests at heart. Far from it, says Marion Nestle, whose Food Politics absorbingly details how the food industry--through lobbying, advertising, and the co-opting of experts--influences our dietary choices to our detriment. Central to her argument is the American "paradox of plenty," the recognition that our food abundance (we've enough calories to meet every citizen's needs twice over) leads profit-fixated food producers to do everything possible to broaden their market portion, thus swaying us to eat more when we should do the opposite. The result is compromised health: epidemic obesity to start, and increased vulnerability to heart and lung disease, cancer, and stroke--reversible if the constantly suppressed "eat less, move more" message that most nutritionists shout could be heard.
Nestle, nutrition chair at New York University and editor of the 1988 Surgeon General Report, has served her time in the dietary trenches and is ideally suited to revealing how government nutritional advice is watered down when a message might threaten industry sales. (Her report on byzantine nutritional food-pyramid rewordings to avoid "eat less" recommendations is both predictable and astonishing.) She has other "war stories," too, that involve marketing to children in school (in the form of soft-drink "pouring rights" agreements, hallway advertising, and fast-food coupon giveaways), and diet-supplement dramas in which manufacturers and the government enter regulation frays, with the industry championing "free choice" even as that position counters consumer protection. Is there hope? "If we want to encourage people to eat better diets," says Nestle, "we need to target societal means to counter food industry lobbying and marketing practices as well as the education of individuals." It's a telling conclusion in an engrossing and masterfully panoramic exposé. (Arthur Boehm)
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GIFT OF GOOD LAND: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural,
by Wendell Berry
In this collection of essays, continuing the argument begun with The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry writes of the importance of good farming to a healthy culture. By health he means not the mere absence of disease, but the operation of a balanced, nondestructive way of life; his essays on the Amish people of Pennsylvania and Ohio offer a model. "An economy of waste," Berry writes, "is incompatible with a healthy environment"--an environment that operates in balance, within bounds. Arguing for the primacy of family-based, local economies, and for the exercise of intelligence, reverence, and community values, Berry crafts a prose idyll celebrating the pastoral existence. (Amazon.com)
"These books [Recollected Essays and The Gift of Good Land] are the kind that you spend months with, hate to give up, and plan to return to soon and often. There is much pure pleasure in them, both in the spare and crafted eloquence of their prose, and in the breadth and depth of their content. They're reference works of the body and soul..." (The Washington Post Book World)
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GREAT POSSESSIONS: An Amish Farmer's Journal
by David Kline, Wendell Berry
"This book announces on every page that the world is good, an article of faith that is here brought to rest upon experience."--from the forward by Wendell Berry. . . What a gift of a book! The introduction, on family and small scale farming, is alone worth the price of the book. These are nature essays in the old tradition: showing nature as an avenue to discovering what it means to be human. Kline practices farming in the Amish tradition, putting him out in the fields many days of the year. There he observes birds passing through, the changes of the seasons, and the various effects of farming practices on other species of living things. The essay In Praise of Fencerows is especially thoughtful and memorable. The title of this book was originally to be the title of Aldo Leopold's classic A Sand County Almanac, and the first chapter title, Winter Visitors, is a chapter title in Henry Thoreau's Walden. Those tributes demonstrate the great precedents on which Kline builds. While he is never as quotable as Thoreau or Leopold, he demonstrates, without sentimentality or preaching, the same depth of heart and understanding. What do we lose as we lose the natural places nearby? Kline shows us that we lose something even more important than species and ecosystems. We lose part of ourselves, a part capable of simple pleasures and joys, a center of decency, strength, and peace. (N.A. Wisser)
I was first attracted to this book because the title seemed to be an oxymoron. I then chose the book for what was inside. I have found Mr. Kline's essays to take me to pleasant places when I was stuck inside. He also helped me to see my world more positively. I don't live very far from the farm that is spoken of in this book, yet I am removed from it by the technology in my life. When I am spiritually encumbered, I take this book in hand to renew myself in short order.
I have read and reread this book and have given it as a gift. I will continue to share it with my friends and family. This time it will be a gift to a very special companion. (A reader from Ohio, near the river)
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HARLAN HUBBARD: Life and Work
by Wendell Berry
"Berry's story of the Hubbards is both reassuring and challenging. . . . [They] enlarged Thoreau's experience into a life." (Noah Adams, Washington Post)
"Quietly but forcefully explores how machines encumber life and how simplicity enhances it." (Atlanta Journal Constitution) |
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HOME ECONOMICS: Fourteen Essays
by Wendell Berry
"My work has been motivated," Wendell Berry has written, "by a desire to make myself responsibly at home in this world and in my native and chosen place." In Home Economics, a collection of fourteen essays, Mr. Berry explores this process and continues to discuss what it means to make oneself "responsibly at home." His title reminds us that the very root of economics is stewardship, household management. To paraphrase Confucius, a healthy planet is made up of healthy nations that are simply healthy communities sharing common ground, and communities are gatherings of households. A measure of the health of the planet is economics -- the health of its households. Any process of destruction or healing must begin at home. Mr. Berry speaks of the necessary coherence of the "Great Economy," as he argues for clarity in our lives, our conceptions, and our communications. To live is not to pass time, but to spend time.
Whether as critic or as champion, Wendell Berry offers careful insights into our personal and national situation in a prose that is ringing and clear.
About the Author
A native Kentuckian, Wendell Berry lived and taught in New York and California before returning permanently to the Kentucky River region, where he farms on 125 acres in Henry County.
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ISHMAEL: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
by Daniel Quinn
From Kirkus Reviews
Here's the novel that, out of 2500 submissions, won the ecological-minded Turner Tomorrow Award--and caused a mutiny among the judges when it was awarded the $500,000 first prize. Is it that good--or bad? No, but it's certainly unusual, even eccentric, enough to place Quinn (the paperback Dreamer, 1988) on the cult literary map.
What's most unusual is that this novel scarcely is one: beneath a thin narrative glaze, it's really a series of Socratic dialogues between man and ape, with the ape as Socrates. The nameless man, who narrates, answers a newspaper ad (``TEACHER seeks pupil...'') that takes him to a shabby office tenanted by a giant gorilla; lo! the ape begins to talk to him telepathically (Quinn's failure to explain this ability is typical of his approach: idea supersedes story). Over several days, the ape, Ishmael, as gruff as his Greek model, drags the man into a new understanding of humanity's place in the world. In a nutshell, Ishmael argues that humanity has evolved two ways of living: There are the ``Leavers,'' or hunter-gatherers (e.g., Bushmen), who live in harmony with the rest of life; and there are the ``Takers'' (our civilization), who arose with the agricultural revolution, aim to conquer the rest of life, and are destroying it in the process. Takers, Ishmael says, have woven a ``story'' to rationalize their conquest; central to this story is the idea that humanity is flawed--e.g., as told in the Bible. But not so, Ishmael proclaims; only the
Taker way is flawed: Leavers offer a method for living well in the world ... A washout as a story, with zero emotional punch; but of
substantial intellectual appeal as the extensive Q&A passages (despite their wild generalities and smug self-assurance) invariably
challenge and provoke: both Socrates and King Kong might be pleased. (Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved)
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LIFE IS A MIRACLE
by Wendell Berry
As a poet, novelist, and farmer, Wendell Berry has worked and written in favor of tried and tested ways, rejecting the notion that the modern is always to be preferred over the old. Technology may have its uses, he has insisted in books like The Gift of Good Land, but what matters more is the crafting of sound human communities and of self-reliant living. Religious faith lies at the heart of Berry's unapologetically old-fashioned program. Faith, which supposes that life is full of unpredictable mysteries, stands against much of modern science, an opposition that Berry explores in Life Is a Miracle. Taking particular issue with entomologist E.O. Wilson's recent book, Consilience, which maintains the supremacy of scientific explanation over religious conjecture and supposes that science will one day be able to answer every question about the hows and whys of life, Berry revisits C.P. Snow's "two cultures" thesis to observe that science and religion address different kinds of necessary questions. "Science cannot replace art or religion," he writes, "for the same reason that you cannot loosen a nut with a saw or cut a board in two with a wrench." Against science's "false specification and pretentious exactitude," Berry notes quietly that the more he observes his own little corner of the planet, a small Kentucky farm, the less patient he is with reductionist, materialist explanations of the way things work--for here, and everywhere, "life ... is unique, given to the world minute by minute, only once, never to be repeated." (Amazon.com)
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LIVING AT NATURE'S PACE: Farming and the American Dream
by Gene Logsdon, Wendell Berry
Logsdon is as impersonal as a politician seeking office in these essays on the small commercial farmer. The operant word is commercial, for Logsdon is no gentleman farmer. Although he writes about the spiritual rewards of farming, he always counterposes to them the thoroughly material woes suffered by the small "food and fiber producer"--his term for farmer. Such attention to terminology bespeaks Logsdon's resistance to the conventional wisdoms of the agribusiness executive, the noble ecological farmer, and even his constituency, the vanishing commercial farmer. It indicates, too, three pervasive features of his writing: tough-mindedness, historical perspective, and close attention to particularities. Thus, when he discusses the decline of the small commercial farmer, he invokes not some vague urban alienation but the changing curriculum in the department of agriculture at Ohio State; and when he writes about small farmers, he describes in detail--skillfully enough to shame most professional ethnographers--extended conversations in the Pour House restaurant. So we take seriously his prophecy that small farming will revive. Even should it fail, his writing documents with rare honesty and perspicacity a calling that has become all but invisible to most of us. (Roland Wulbert)
The author (Two Acre Eden, 1971) has written a good deal about farming in books and articles, and these essays (1980-92) were written, by Logsdon's own admission, ``out of anger'' at the decline of rural society, the result, he believes, of ``a nation's greed.'' Here he targets some root causes--from educational, media and governmental malfeasances. In 1986 Logsdon took on some of the thorny matters leading to ``agricultural suicide'': the emphasis on surplus, insuring market glut; interest-rate devilment; and particularly the 70's boom psychology, then the lowering inflation, undercutting the paper- rich farmer who'd learned to borrow money, buy a farm and buy another when the price rose. In a 1980 essay, Logsdon has an instructive imaginary dialogue with three model farmers-- ``agribusiness''; the middle-income farmer; and--the happiest--the small farmer. (Definitely teacher's pet, this last is the skilled farmer like the Amish variety Logsdon admires: doesn't borrow or buy new equipment, rotates crops, uses no herbicide, etc.) In other essays, Logsdon comes down heavily on the side of the small-scale farm, which diversifies with complementary, independent farm units. He has pleasant things to say about horses and old tools, all economically sound. He is merciless, though, in his precision- bombing of the colleges of agriculture, mere ``havens for golf-turf science'' and for the waste of soil through heavy machinery, toxic chemicals, and erosion. The closing essays are nice appreciations of woodcutters' pleasures and of viewing the acres (Logsdon paces his in Ohio.) With an introduction by poet Wendell Berry, a sturdy blast for the rural life. Good reading for farmers and Aggie majors and for those who might ponder, as consumers, Logsdon's caveat: ``It is cheaper to raise a zucchini in your garden than on your megafarm.'' (Kirkus Associates)
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MY ISHMAEL
by Daniel Quinn
Daniel Quinn has finally found the proper target with his "concurrent sequel" to his rightfully popular "Ishmael." Ishmael, a mountain gorilla, enters into telepathic dialogues with his students. In this book, Ishmael's student is a twelve year old girl. The adult mindsets and idealism Ishmael dealt with in the previous book are replaced by a cynical, street-wise young adult. Julie, who is as close to an orphan as you can get and still have a resident parent, is inspired by the newspaper advert: "Teacher seeking pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world." Although she hasn't a clue how to accomplish that desire, she feels compelled to give it a go.
If you've read "Ishmael," don't assume this book is redundant. Ishmael himself is reluctant to teach one so young. After all, what could a 12-year-old accomplish? Any reader of this volume might entertain the same doubts, but Quinn's adept talent has Ishmael query Julie on what she believes and why. He's patient [unlike most adults with children] and his "teaching" is, in reality a means to make Julie examine her beliefs. Ishmael is able couch his questions in terms Julie can understand. Step by step, Ishmael prods Julie into greater awareness of that world she desires to save. In the beginning, of course, she doesn't even know what's wrong with the world. Her vague disquiet is given focus as Ishmael's questions prod her thinking.
Julie becomes aware that the basic tactic of civilization is to "lock up the food." From this situation everything else that circumscribes our lives follows. Working for wages, a hierarchical society, religion and other trappings of "culture" that bind our existence. Ishmael shows what an innovation in human experience this tactic is, and how recently imposed. Locking up the food and creating a structured society, according to Ishmael, has led to an immensely powerful Mother Culture. Mother Culture lays down and enforces the rules of society. She's created a prison, which will require re-thinking about culture in order for us, the prisoners, to escape.
Not all societies, however, subscribe to these rules. Mother Culture has created the Taker society, while those remaining outside her domain, Ishmael dubs the Leavers. The division is nearly absolute, with the Takers striving to take all, while the Leavers have survived by leaving what they don't need. Quinn assures us that the separation is neither inevitable nor absolute. But changes in outlook are necessary if the Takers are not to destroy the planet.
Quinn's excellent style keeps a "message" book from becoming a "preaching" book. That's no small accomplishment, given the immensity of the task. He reassures us that he understands the Taker society will not revert to a pure Leaver culture. In order to survive, however, it will be necessary for the Takers to "talk to their neighbours." Not just the folks next door, but all the rest of life. This is not a reversion to a simpler life, but an expansion of knowledge and understanding. It's hardly a drastic step, but it hasn't been taken. My Ishmael encourages you to take that first step. A better world is certain to follow, since that first step must inevitably lead to others. Buy this book for your children or even your neighbour's children. It may be too late for older folks to learn the lessons, but it's their world starting tomorrow.
(Stephen A. Haines, Ottawa, Ontario Canada)
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The Nature of Personal Reality; A Seth Book
by Jane Roberts
This book is, along with "Seth Speaks", and a few of the other "Seth" books, the most important set of books I have ever read. The information comes from a personality known a "Seth", a teacher who was channeled by Jane Roberts. Seth has lived many lives on Earth, and his perspective, as one who once lived here but now "resides" in another dimension, is riveting. I know many people will find it very weird to consider the idea that a "dead" person could channel information, but after reading this book I think you will be convinced.
The book is about meta-physics in the truest sense of the world - above physics. Unlike religion, which presents a set a dogmatic beliefs, this book presents non-judgemental information.The approach is "try it; if it makes sense to you, use it."
Some of the insights have to do with how we shape our own reality. Seth teaches us that we always have a choice about what is happening in our lives, and provides insights as to why seemlingly bad things may be happening. In all cases, these things have to do with something that we have chosen. Its not about karma, or retribution, or atonement. Its more about creating the kind of life you want to have for yourself. Once you realize the mechanics of things and how the universe works, you can shape your life to better suit you.
This is what I mean by meta-physics. This book is almost a "how to guide" of the universe. Once you know what the mechanisms are, you have a much better time understanding how to use them.
I don't mean to say that this is simple. The lessons are often complex and difficult to make sense of. Part of that has to with the notion that the way in which our earthly thought process works only captures a very small part of what the universe is all about. Our brains don't always "get it." But the good news is that our "souls" do.
I can honestly say my life was dramatically improved by this and the other Jan Roberts books. They take a lot of work - you have to be willing to let go of lots of concepts you've spent your whole life building. But if you do, the world starts making a whole lot more sense. What more can one ask of a book?
(Matthew Belge, Lincoln, MA)
Do you know how there are some moments that are so magical in your life, you wish you could go back and live them over? That's how I feel about "The Nature of Personal Reality." Honestly I don't know how many times I have read this book through from cover to cover. Such is the amazing impact it has had on me and my view of the world. It has influenced everything from how I interact with others to why I became an author.
People can be funny about the "Seth books." I recommend them all, and "The Nature of Personal Reality" in particular. Yet I also realize that some people aren't quite ready for Seth. That's okay. Many of the concepts will seem so radical, so revolutionary, that they can be a bit much to take at first. The more you read Seth, the more you understand. And the beauty of this book is that it has almost become the "Bible" for the whole New Age movement. In fact, after you read it through once, do what I do. Take the book down from the shelf, open it at random, and start reading. Almost always you will discover that the passage you chance upon has some personal meaning to you. This is the secret to really getting the most out of "The Nature of Personal Reality."
(Joseph B. Mullen, Effingham, NH)
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REAL MEDICINE REAL HEALTH
by Arden B. Andersen
From the back cover:
Western Medicine, unquestionably, provides the best emergency/trauma medcine available anywhere in the world. If you are having a heart attack, were in an auto accident, have some acute injury, a snake bite or near drowning, western emergency medicine iw what you want and need. Unfortunately, once you leave the emergency department, the eliteness and success of western medicines quickly fades into corporate agendas and bottom line profits.
Real Medicine, Real Health gives the reader, the patient, a look at the real options available to them as patients to treat everything from heart disease to chronic fatigue, autism to cancer. There are real solutions for these diseases if the patient only knows they exist. They are well documentated in the medical literature but unfortunately 'policitially incorrect'. Real Medicine, Real Health comes back to nutrition. Good nutrition comes back to agriculture and the way our foods are grown. Western farming systems have raped the soils, depleted the minerals, and compromised our food resources. Real Medicine must start with the patient's diet and ulimately the nutrition on the farm. Real Medicine, Real Health lays the foundation for patients to take charge of their own health and healthcare.
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SCRATCHING THE WOODCHUCK: Nature on an Amish Farm
by David Kline, Wendell Minor (Illustrator)
An Amish farmer's blissful account of the rhythms of nature and work, finding delight in everyday places. ``Sometimes I wonder whether I farm to make a living or whether it is all a front, just an excuse to be out in the fields looking at clouds,'' writes Kline (Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer's Journal, 1990), who works the farm in northwestern Ohio where he grew up. He's not a typical modern-day farmer: He plows with draft horses and uses chemical pesticides only as a last resort, and then reluctantly. His view of wildlife is more enlightened, too. He tolerates woodchucks (considered unredeemed pests by farmers dependent on expensive heavy equipment) because their burrows nurture foxes, rabbits, and other species. Kline organizes his observations into short, discursive essays that shift easily from farmstead to fields, woods, and the community. Though some early passages seem pedestrian (the section on spiders reads like an elementary science text), his observations of plants and animals grow more intriguing the farther from home he wanders. Kline's finest moments involve fascinating interactions with wildlife that show how attuned he is to nature. He observes a titmouse plucking fur for its nest from a sleeping raccoon's back, recalls a pet crow from childhood who liked to grip the hood ornaments of cars and go for a feather-ruffling ride, and stands stock still in a field until a weasel passes between his legs, close enough for Kline to observe drops of blood on its nose. He respects nature, and it rewards him with genuine oddities: A damselfly lays eggs on his finger; a napping woodchuck arches its back appreciatively when he scratches it with his walking stick. Though Kline's thoroughly charming survey of the natural world focuses on the flora and fauna indigenous to Ohio, it has much to teach us about appreciating wild things wherever we happen to be. (Kirkus Associates)
From the bestselling author of Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer's Journal comes a sparkling new collection of essays on nature, farming, animals, and a host of other topics in which he seems to endlessly delight. (Ingram) |
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SETH SPEAKS: The Eternal Validity of the Soul
by Jane Roberts
I originally purchased this book in the early 80s not long after I had enlisted in the Air Force and saw a fellow airman reading one of the more advanced volumes of the Seth material. He dissuaded me from reading the volume he was reading and suggested I read "Seth Speaks" instead. Being no stranger to the metaphysical (I was raised a Christian Scientist and my Grandfather has a testimonial in that the Science and Health), I nonetheless started my read of Seth Speaks with some skepticism. It was not long before I became absolutely engrossed in the book, spending nearly three weeks of time doing nothing but study it in my spare time (along with some long runs from time to time to clear my mind). I then obtained several other volumes of the Seth Material, and studied those as well. I thank you for considering my comments.
TO THOSE WHO THINK THAT THE BOOKS ARE A HOAX DESIGNED TO GENERATE CASH FOR JANE ROBERTS AND ROBERT BUTTS: There are few who apparently agree with you in these reviews. Furthermore, I sincerely doubt if these fine people ever made any significant money from writing these books. Frankly, I'm glad they made enough of a living to spend time generating the material.
THE PROOF IS IN THE PRACTICE OF THE CONCEPTS: Only by practicing the concepts in these books, begining with the concept that consciosness precedes form ("You - you as a multidimensional personality - create your own reality" as so many herein have mentioned), can you find out if these ideas are suited for you. If they are not, you will know. If they are, you will also know.
THIS BOOK IS A MUST READ FOR YOU: Not many books can be read by many people and turn out to be their favorite book of all time. This book is my favorite book of all time (though I have to admit I've read "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen nine times - which is more times than I've read Seth Speaks - wasn't it Balzac who read P&P 17 times?). I'm glad to see that so many other people give it a high ranking in the personal cannon. If you think you might be interested in this book, I suggest you try it.
THE DANGER IN THIS BOOK. I'm always amused when people suggest that a book is dangerous. Yes, if you believe it is dangerous, it may be to you. Ideas are dangerous. Don't read stuff that threatens your comfortable and happy existence. Now, if you're not comfortable and happy with the way things are, and you sort of think that there is source of power and energy that underlies our existence, you might find this book very reassuring. For in the conceptual framework of the Seth material, the world as we know it is stripped of most of its rules (and dogma) and a rather simple code replaces them: namely that we are responsible for the world as it is and that we should think twice before harming other beings and things. That's a hearty dose of self-respect.
RE-READING "SETH SPEAKS": Like many other reviewers, I found that this book always provides me fresh insight when I return to it. By the same token, I'm not afraid to tell you that I, at one time, threw all volumes in my possession of the Seth material in the garbage, not because I thought it was evil or stupid, but because I thought I needed a complete break from my absorption in it. I have wondered if this is why Jane Roberts passed away in her 50s (I think it was) - perhaps she was getting too intertwined with the Seth material - and it seems that in the final volume - "The Way Towards Health" - Seth is reluctant to let her go. In a way, Jane had become synonymous with Seth, and I expect that her own work has never gained the popularity that the Seth material achieved -- but who am I to comment on this? She seemed to have been a very vital and unique personality. I wish I'd have known her personally. In any case, there are few books that people find worth re-reading, and I can see I'm not alone in finding "Seth Speaks" to be one of those books.
WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT: I've seen some reviewers have attempted to explain the book and even give it a sort-of literary review by comparing it to other literature in the metaphysical and religious genres. This books is a highly personal book, and must be read and absorbed by you and you alone. It is both a difficult and easy read; difficult in that the concepts presented will not immediately make sense to you (you will have endless questions) and easy in that you can read it without stopping to contemplate it. Read it as you wish, at whatever pace you wish. Put it away (or throw it away!) and come back to it later. YOU WILL KNOW IF IT'S FOR YOU OR NOT -- IF YOU ARE SEARCHING FOR AN EXPLANATION FOR WHY THINGS ARE THE WAY THEY ARE, I SUGGEST YOU READ THIS BOOK.
HOW YOU MIGHT KNOW IF THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU. This book may be for you if you often wonder how it is that God (or whoever) created this existence, or if you wonder why God has been so cruel, or if you have a background in belief systems, or scientific evidence that espoused or theorized the idea that "mind" creates or has an influence over "matter." If you like metaphysics, read it. If you don't think science has alll the answers (like any good scientist), then consider this book as an alternative - or possible quantum leap forward in scientific thinking.
(C A Hughes, near San Diego, CA)
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THE UNSETTLING OF AMERICA: Culture & Agriculture
by Wendell Berry
The mid-20th-century environmental crisis that led to important protective legislation in the 1970s, is, to poet/farmer Wendell Berry's mind, also a crisis of character, agriculture, and culture. Because Americans are divorced from the land, they mistreat it; because they are divorced from each other, they mistreat those around them. Berry, writing in a prophetic mode, argues that if Americans are to heal the environmental wounds their land has suffered, they will also need to create more meaningful work, sustain happier and healthier lives, and return to what conservatives call "family values." The Unsettling of America is a quarter century old now, but most of its arguments remain current. (Amazon.com)
Berry's assessment of modern agriculture and its relationship to American culture--our health, economy, personal relationships, morals, and spiritual values--is more timely than ever. This new edition of Berry's work presents a a classic testament to the value of the American family farm. (Ingram)
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The Untethered Soul; The Journey Beyond Yourself
by Michael A. Singer
Who are you? When you start to explore this question, you find out how elusive it really is. Are you a physical body? A collection of experiences and memories? A partner to relationships? Each time you consider aspects of yourself, you realize that there is much more to you than any of these can define. In this book, spiritual teacher Michael Singer explores the question of who we are and arrives at the conclusion that our identity is to be found in our consciousness, the fact of our ability to observe ourselves and the world around us. By tapping into traditions of meditation and mindfulness, Singer shows how the development of consciousness can enable us all to dwell in the present moment and let go of painful thoughts and memories that keep us from achieving happiness and self-realization.
Divided into five parts, the book offers a frank and friendly discussion of consciousness and how we can develop it. In part one, he examines the notion of self and the inner dialogue that all of us live with. Part two examines the experience of energy as it flows through us and works to show readers how to open their hearts to the energy of experience that permeates their lives. Ways to overcome tendencies to close down to the rest of the world are the subject of part three. Enlightenment and the embrace of universal consciousness are the subject of part four. And finally, in part five, Singer returns to daily life and the pursuit of "unconditional happiness." Throughout, the book maintains a light and engaging tone, free from heavy dogma and prescriptive religious references. The easy exercises that figure in each chapter help readers experience the ideas that Singer presents.
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